Sunday, August 11, 2019
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Why You Should Care About The Arrest Of Shomrim Leader Jacob Daskal
BORO PARK – Last Thursday the NYPD arrested Jacob Daskal on charges of raping a 16 year old.
Besides the obviously horrendous crime, this arrest is a big deal because Daskal is the president of Boro Park Shomrim (“Guards”) – the private, Orthodox Jewish, security force that patrols Borough Park. There are other Shomrim groups that patrol Flatbush, Crown Heights and Williamsburg. They may easily be mistaken for the NYPD, and to many in the Orthodox Jewish enclaves in Brooklyn they effectively are.
Shomrim have a command centers that look like the NYPD’s, down to the slogan of Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect:
Their shield could easily be mistaken for NYPD at a distance:
Shomrim grew out of a neighborhood watch group known as the “Bakery Boys” in 1990s – young men who delivered bread at night and witnessed lots of car break-ins, but the group has always been controversial. Daskal was a founding member, and has been an intermediary between the NYPD’s 66th Precinct and his Boro Park community ever since.
“Since then, Daskal and the Shomrim have cultivated close ties to the local precinct. A former member of the Shomrim told the Forward in 2016 that Daskal was able to arrange for Orthodox Jews arrested on minor crimes in Boro Park to be released with a ticket ordering them to appear before a judge, rather than being booked through the central system. Daskal denied at the time that he played that role”, Forward wrote on Friday.
“In 2012, Daskal argued against giving police access publicly-funded security cameras installed throughout Boro Park, telling the Forward that it could lead to unwanted police involvement in domestic violence matters. “The camera is very good for the community, but if it’s a private thing,” Daskal told the Forward at the time. “If it’s a public thing it might hurt a person who doesn’t want to arrest her husband for domestic violence.”
These cameras were swiftly installed across Boro Park and Midwood, maintained by a private security company related to Agudath Israel, despite the relatively low crime rates in the area, in the aftermath of the horrific death of eight year old Leiby Kletzky in Kensington. His parents had reported him missing to Shomrim, who failed to call it in to the NYPD for more than three hours, until after the child’s family called 911.
“The Shomrim have helped the police maintain a community that’s mostly free of the shootings in the streets and crimes that usually end up in the media,” Ben Hirsch, a founder of Survivors for Justice, a group that advocates for victims of sexual violence within the Orthodox community told The Village Voice in 2011. “But you do still have some of the terrible social crimes that police would normally be responding to. Instead, within these communities, these crimes are usually reported to Shomrim, and the Shomrim coordinators working together with Orthodox Jewish “community liaisons” cover it up, and it never gets to the cops.”
Such crimes seem to mostly relate to child and domestic abuse. Daskal let it slip in a conversation with the Daily News the aftermath of the Kletzky case that Shomrim kept a list of suspected child molesters that had about 15 people on it that was not shared with the NYPD” because some rabbis oppose civilian police involvement”.
“It’s against Halacha [Jewish law] to go the police without speaking to the rabbis,” Rabbi Joseph Hershkowitz confirmed to the Daily News back in 2011. “We consider Shomrim and Hatzolah [the Jewish ambulance service] family. So you go to family first.”
It seems, however, that this approach results in crimes covered up, or dismissed when brought up for justice.
With crime rates as low as they are, maybe it is time for the NYPD be the only cops in town.
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Thursday, July 4, 2019
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Don’t Worry, De Blasio’s Presidential Bid Is Just An Excuse For A Crime ...
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Don’t Worry, De Blasio’s Presidential Bid Is Just An Excuse For A Crime ...
Monday, May 27, 2019
Why You Should Care About The Arrest Of Shomrim Leader Jacob Daskal
BORO PARK – Last Thursday the NYPD arrested Jacob Daskal on charges of raping a 16 year old.
Besides the obviously horrendous crime, this arrest is a big deal because Daskal is the president of Boro Park Shomrim (“Guards”) – the private, Orthodox Jewish, security force that patrols Borough Park. There are other Shomrim groups that patrol Flatbush, Crown Heights and Williamsburg. They may easily be mistaken for the NYPD, and to many in the Orthodox Jewish enclaves in Brooklyn they effectively are.
Shomrim have a command centers that look like the NYPD’s, down to the slogan of Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect:
Their shield could easily be mistaken for NYPD at a distance:
Shomrim grew out of a neighborhood watch group known as the “Bakery Boys” in 1990s – young men who delivered bread at night and witnessed lots of car break-ins, but the group has always been controversial. Daskal was a founding member, and has been an intermediary between the NYPD’s 66th Precinct and his Boro Park community ever since.
“Since then, Daskal and the Shomrim have cultivated close ties to the local precinct. A former member of the Shomrim told the Forward in 2016 that Daskal was able to arrange for Orthodox Jews arrested on minor crimes in Boro Park to be released with a ticket ordering them to appear before a judge, rather than being booked through the central system. Daskal denied at the time that he played that role”, Forward wrote on Friday.
“In 2012, Daskal argued against giving police access publicly-funded security cameras installed throughout Boro Park, telling the Forward that it could lead to unwanted police involvement in domestic violence matters. “The camera is very good for the community, but if it’s a private thing,” Daskal told the Forward at the time. “If it’s a public thing it might hurt a person who doesn’t want to arrest her husband for domestic violence.”
These cameras were swiftly installed across Boro Park and Midwood, maintained by a private security company related to Agudath Israel, despite the relatively low crime rates in the area, in the aftermath of the horrific death of eight year old Leiby Kletzky in Kensington. His parents had reported him missing to Shomrim, who failed to call it in to the NYPD for more than three hours, until after the child’s family called 911.
“The Shomrim have helped the police maintain a community that’s mostly free of the shootings in the streets and crimes that usually end up in the media,” Ben Hirsch, a founder of Survivors for Justice, a group that advocates for victims of sexual violence within the Orthodox community told The Village Voice in 2011. “But you do still have some of the terrible social crimes that police would normally be responding to. Instead, within these communities, these crimes are usually reported to Shomrim, and the Shomrim coordinators working together with Orthodox Jewish “community liaisons” cover it up, and it never gets to the cops.”
Such crimes seem to mostly relate to child and domestic abuse. Daskal let it slip in a conversation with the Daily News the aftermath of the Kletzky case that Shomrim kept a list of suspected child molesters that had about 15 people on it that was not shared with the NYPD” because some rabbis oppose civilian police involvement”.
“It’s against Halacha [Jewish law] to go the police without speaking to the rabbis,” Rabbi Joseph Hershkowitz confirmed to the Daily News back in 2011. “We consider Shomrim and Hatzolah [the Jewish ambulance service] family. So you go to family first.”
It seems, however, that this approach results in crimes covered up, or dismissed when brought up for justice.
With crime rates as low as they are, maybe it is time for the NYPD be the only cops in town.
Never miss the day’s stories!
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Sunday, May 5, 2019
Friday, May 3, 2019
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Monday, April 22, 2019
Monday, February 11, 2019
Yanky Jacob Daskal, 59 The influential leader of a Brooklyn safety patrol known as the SHOMRIM had been sexually abusing a teenage girl for over a year.
The influential leader of a Brooklyn safety patrol known as the SHOMRIM had been sexually abusing a teenage girl,
Yanky Jacob Daskal, 59, who runs the Shomrim’s Brooklyn South Safety Patrol, a Hasidic neighborhood watch group, abused the girl between August and November of last year, police said…
Brooklyn safety official charged with raping 16-year-old girl
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |May 10, 2018
Jacob Daskal, 59, who runs the Shomrim’s Brooklyn South Safety Patrol, a Hasidic neighborhood watch group, abused the girl between August and November of last year, police said.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/brooklyn-safety-official-charged-raping-16-year-old-girl-article-1.3982706
Brooklyn Safety Patrol Leader Is Charged in Sex Abuse of Teen
On Wednesday, sex crimes investigators for the New York Police Department received a troubling report: The influential leader of a Brooklyn safety patrol known as the shomrim had been sexually abusing a teenage girl, the police were told.
A day later, detectives arrested the man, Jacob Daskal, a leader of one faction of what has been, since the 1970s, a sort of auxiliary police force for the ultra-Orthodox Jews of Brooklyn’s Borough Park, Crown Heights, Flatbush and Williamsburg neighborhoods.
Mr. Daskal, 59, was charged with statutory rape, sexual abuse and other crimes. The authorities believe the abuse took place at Mr. Daskal’s home between August and November of last year, when the girl, who is now 16, was a year younger. But the inquiry is continuing, to determine if the alleged abuse occurred over a longer period of time or if there were additional victims.
The revelations cast another shadow over a group that has long cultivated relationships with New York’s law enforcement and elected leaders — and that has secured government funding for vehicles, phones and other equipment integral to its brand of security for some of the city’s most insular populations. On several occasions, critics have questioned whether the shomrim’s proximity to authority has fostered vigilantism or corruption.
In the case of Mr. Daskal, 59, he was arrested at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, within the 77th police precinct, the police said. He was then taken to the Brooklyn Special Victims squad, they said.On Friday, the police said that Mr. Daskal had been charged with third-degree rape; third-degree criminal sex act; forcible touching; acting in a manner injurious to a child less than 17; and third-degree sexual abuse. He shuffled, handcuffed, into court for arraignment and pleaded not guilty before Judge Deborah Dowling, who issued an order of protection on behalf of his accuser.
Evan Lipton, a lawyer for Mr. Daskal, said his client was prepared to surrender his passport.
Afterward, as Mr. Daskal was released on bail, some supporters surrounded him in a hallway as Mr. Lipton told him, “Your phones have been seized.”
It was not immediately clear what triggered Wednesday’s report to the police.
Around Borough Park, people seemed dazed by the news of the arrest.
On those same streets, the shomrim are seen as quick-acting stand-ins for police officers. With their two-way radios and social media links, they have won praise for keeping a watchful eye on the community, chasing down burglars, controlling crowds and locating the missing.
Residents, many of whom are Yiddish-speaking and cling to a culture rooted in preindustrial Europe, trust the shomrim as liaisons to secular authorities, who can negotiate language barriers and complex social mores.
According to state campaign finance records, Mr. Daskal has been a consistent political contributor over the years.
Police officials, too, have embraced the shomrim. It is commonplace for shomrim leaders to attend promotion ceremonies at Police Headquarters in Lower Manhattan.
In 2015, a year before he became police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, then the chief of department, threw out the first pitch at an annual softball game between officers from the 66th Precinct and members of the Borough Park shomrim. Mr. Lichtenstein played in that game, the Greenfield Classic, named for David G. Greenfield, a city councilman who represents the district. In an interview in 2016, however, Mr. Daskal denied that Mr. Lichtenstein’s criminal case involving the gun permits had anything to do with the shomrim.
On Friday, as investigators streamed in and out of Mr. Daskal’s house, signs of their connections were evident. Parked in the street, near Mr. Daskal’s driveway, were a pair of shomrim vehicles outfitted like police patrol cars: emergency lights; a shield logo; the words “Courtesy Professionalism Respect” written on the side.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/nyregion/brooklyn-shomrim-leader-charged-sex-abuse.html